Photo: Guy de Lancey
Venom is a good comeback for young playwright Juliet Jenkin, who after her magnificent success with The Boy Who Fell from the Roof dipped somewhat with the rather dull Library. In Venom she returns to the scenario of unrequited physical intimacy between dominant, articulate girl and troubled boy, and to sketching eccentric characters that delight audiences with their quirky digressions about life.
This time Jenkin ventures into darker emotional waters. Gabriel (Nicholas Dallas) is a dysfunctional young man and borderline schizophrenic menaced by paranoid visions of a snake-like thing. His girl friend Zann (Jenkin) plays along, singing to calm him and nurture him through his psychosis (perhaps in the faith that R D Laing’s theory is correct and he’ll recuperate by himself). How life pushed Gabriel over the edge we realize early on is the revelation that will be manufactured for the climax of the play.
As an actor Dallas possesses exactly the right sensitivity to match his character’s vulnerability and he delivers a nuanced and very fine performance. As the author, Jenkin is perfectly at home in the role of Zann.
Despite its numerous strengths, its originality, Jenkin’s intelligent observations and off-beat humour, one is however left with an incomplete feeling, the kind of simultaneous relief and disappointment one experiences when after having lit all the candles and settled down, the electricity comes back on. The political commentary which is expressed as a sort of crude diagnosis is at the nub of the problem. Gabriel worries that he might be becoming a white supremacist. But what Jenkin doesn’t resolve convincingly yet wishes to convey is how her characters’ inner turmoil reflect the social undercurrents at large.
